Update: On the conference call, management rpojected revenue this quarter of $370 million to $373 million, and EPS in a range of 32 cents to 33 cents. That is a bit below current consensus for $373 million and 33 cents.

For the full year, the company sees revenue of $1.51 billion to $1.54 billion, and EPS of $1.31 to $1.35. That is, again, a tad light of the consensus $1.53 billion and $1.34.

Red Hat shares are up $1.08, or 2.3%, at $47.30.

Update 2: Following the conference call, Whitehurst was kind enough to chat by telephone with me. He characterized fiscal Q1 as “one of those normal, solid, continuing-to-execute quarters.”

Whitehurts was most keen on two the company’s newer “open source” computing products, its implementation of the “OpenStack” virtualization platform for data centers, and something called “OpenShift,” its version of so-called platform-as-a-service.

While Red Hat has already had a freely available version of OpenStack, called “RDO,” or Red Hat Distribution of OpenStack, it has announced general availability of the enterprise version of the software for next month. RedShift became generally available last week.

Said Whitehurst, “The most negative thing you could say about Red Hat in the last five years is that we came in and we commoditized existing software categories.”

“But now we have hit this inflection point where open-source architectures are leading, and so for us it’s exciting to have a chance to do that.

Whitehurst said of OpenShift that it was originally intended just to be used as a tool by enterprise software developers, though it is catching on more broadly within corporations as customers try to wring more productivity out of their programmers.

Most of Red Hat’s software is today implemented “on premise,” on companies’ own servers, not as a service inside cloud computing. That seems to run counter to the trend to use OpenStack for cloud computing deployments, such as, for example, with Rackspace Hosting (RAX) and other service providers. But Whitehurst sees OpenStack as still very “nascent,” he said, and he expects that over time, the very large contributions Red Hat has made to the OpenStack project mean the company’s version will proliferate into the cloud.

“Enterprise customers are afraid that in a hybrid world, they won’t be able to ensure their applications run properly.”

“If you write your apps for Amazon[.com (AMZN) Web Services], you can’t ever move it off Amazon. The only way to ensure you can have flexibility is with Red Hat.”

Whitehurst noted Red Hat now have certified 13,000 certified apps to work with their OpenStack implemention, and have “100 major ecosystem partners.”

“There is a general need for some common version for people to certify to and around,” he notes.

“I talk to telcos and they say they want to use OpenStack, but then as we talk, they don’t fully understand things like how to move patches up-stream,” says Whitehurst. “Once they realize what’s required, they say, ‘Wow, that’s hard,’ and then they’re interested in talking with us about how we can support them.”

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.